GIS, Maps, Geo and Location Technology by @gletham

Header Right

Main navigation

flickr

Sharing photos via Flickr is an awesome way to archive and share photos, I’ve been using the service almost since Day 1. The now free service provides a great way to easily upload photos over mobile while it is also to have a backup of your photos hosted in the cloud. Flickr makes it a little tricky to locate your feed, however, it really is there!

Here’s a tip for Flickr users who want to share their GPS information with their photos… note, in order to do this you’ll need to be capturing photos using a GPS-enabled or GPS-aware camera (see you’re smartphone hardware settings to ensure that GPS or location sharing is turned “ON)”. You’ll notice that photos on Flickr can optionally be Geo-Tagged, this will enable you to view the photos on a map or access all your streams Geo Tagged photos from the GeoRSS feed (Flickr provides this to all users – see the very bottom of your Flickr page for a link to it). You can actually view all your stream’s GeoTagged photos on Google maps by copy/pasting the GeoRSS feed url into Google maps or Google Earth – Flickr also provides a handy KML link

To auto Geo Tag your Flickr photo uploads you’ll need to enable this functionality in your Flickr account settings. When logged into Flickr, see your Account Settings / Privacy & Permissions, and set the “Import EXIF location data” to YES – by default it is set to NO. Once you do so you should be able to see your Geo Tagged photo uploads on the map that is provided. See my Flickr Stream HERE

Note, for privacy/security reasons many Flickr users tend to prefer to manually place their photos on the map. Having a default setting of yes to sharing GPS EXIF data can result in sharing the precise location of photos that you may not wish to publicly share… be careful! As an example, I once noticed a professional photographer who was sharing all the portrait photos he had captured, many of the photos revealed the home location where family photos had been captured…

A simple how-to reminder here as I generate this simple blog post from Flickr… did you know you could do that? I’m a huge Flickr fan and have been a user for a long time (it has to be more than 5 years now I’m sure). Something cool and very useful that I’ve been messing with recently is the ability share and blog from your photos.

Using this photo as an example, I simply select the Share option and Blog sub-option. then, from a list of pre-configured blogs (I’m posting to wordpress self-hosted and blogger hosted blogs) I can easily share a photo and provide any additional text that I want. The process may not be perfect, but there’s no arguing that it really is handy!

I’m a long time Flickr user having joined a few weeks after the service launched several years ago. With thousands of photos archived permanently it gets tough to come up with clever ways to organize and share photos. One of my favorite and most useful tools is a cool Slideshow creation tool called FlickrSlidr http://flickrslidr.com. the app enables users to easily and quickly create a handy slideshow of images (all of them or from a selected set) and share via website or blog. Just another handy tool for the toolbox! Finally, a handy tip.. when archiving photos from your travels on flickr, be sure to organize your photos in logical sets. IF you need to create a map of your photos simply be sure to geotag photos from an entire set, then you’ll be able easily grab a GeoRSS feed of your photoset and use it within tools like google maps and Google Earth to display and share your images using a handy map UI.

New from Bing as the company has created a cool mashup that integrates Flickr photos with Streetside imagery. From the Bing maps team… We’ve just rolled out a new application that is currently in a tech preview phase that pulls photos from Flickr®, associates them with Bing Maps Streetside photos and then overlays them by stretching the photo to form fit where in the world it belongs. The new application called Streetside Photos is currently available in Seattle, San Francisco and Vancouver (Canada) – (hello, Olympics!!) to view your Flickr photos in a whole new way. Check out the Bing Search post, Spatial Search: The New Frontier for a full read on how we’re changing how we think of search. See more in the cool video provided below:

In a relatively quiet move, Flickr recently added Twitter integration to their service – enter Flickr2Twitter. Using the service, Flickr users can now easily “blog” their existing photo to Twitter with one click or they can send their photos directly to flickr and Twitter in one move from their mobile or via email. Flickr2Twitter Beta can be found at http://www.flickr.com/groups/flickrtwitterbeta

In order to use the service, Flickr users will first need to provide the proper authorization and give Twitter access to your account- see www.flickr.com/account/blogs/add/twitter
Then, to easily start flick/Twitter posting from your mobile simply post to your unique email+Twitter address. Then, when you upload via email, the subject line will be taken as your Twitter tweet, and a special Flickr-y short URL to the photo will be appended. For an example see photo here http://twitter.com/gletham/status/2431210430

Are you a flickr user? Do you moblog from your smart phone? Check this out… netomat, Inc announced today that its free netomat hub service (www.netomat.net) is optimized for Flickr, the online photo management and sharing application, to deliver Flickr updates with images and text to mobile phones. To receive Flickr updates simply sign up with netomat and click “Start a hub” Members can then choose the netomat Flickr news feed or start a new hub with the unique RSS 2.0 or Atom feed link found at the bottom of each Flickr group page. The new content will then be sent to members’ mobile phones, PCs or both, whichever they prefer. netomat hub also seamlessly integrates multiple essential services for real-time group communication on mobile phones and PCs. This includes picture and text messaging with presence, trusted social networking, RSS syndication, digital photo storage and update alerts.

Here’s a story and a great idea that would be HUGE here in Fort Collins, CO given that huge number of biking enthusiasts that we have (case in point, Tour de Fat from New Belgium).

Apparently, there’s a crew of flickr enthusiasts that are equipped with Nokia N95s (what else) and driving around, snapping photos and loading their geo-tagged imaged up to flickr… kind of a green solution to street view… awesome! See more

So that got me thinking… given that some friends at Nokia in Helsinki just hooked me up with a cool bike mounted phone holder and a sweet Nokia Sports Tracker T-shirt, I think I may have to start logging a few miles on the bike and snapping and storing some geotagged bicycle street views from the N95 for myself! Using my bike, my cool Nokia device mounting bracket, and the cool Sports Tracker service and just may start compiling bike views of my local area. The data is easily shared online, I can then even export via KML and use in Google Earth and also share my geotagged photos captured along the way via my flickr… sounds like loads of geo fun to me!

Woohoo, flickr is now supporting videos… sweet! I just stumbled on the news and am trying to give it a test for myself to prove that its actually true. Unfortunately my Shozu (mobile uploading app) is totally whacked ever since I upgrade to the latest version (nice!) but no worries, I can still upload via my Notebook. Some items of interest about flickr video. Obviously a Pro account is suggested as that removes any upload restrictions on size. Also, videos are restricted to 90 seconds max. so keep that in mind. Some more details from Flickr… Video on Flickr grew out of the idea of “long photos” and as such, we’ve implemented what might seem like an arbitrary limit of playing back the first 90 seconds of a video. 90 seconds? Individual video files must be smaller than 150MB in size. See www.flickr.com and check out the FAQ. I’m now going to trying hitting m.flickr.com and upload a clip from my N95 via WiFi… hang on!

Ok, my test from the N95 is having issues as I need to re-install a couple of things, however, I did manage to upload an old video clip from my notebook. Nothing too exciting, but see below for a video montage I created from some pics I took in Paris in 2003. Can’t wait to build out my Flickr Video gallery! Oh, like YouTube, there’s also an embed option where you simply grab some code and paste into your blog.

Please visit www.GISuser.com for even more updates about GIS, mapping, and geospatial technologies